Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday November 14, 2012 @04:17PM
from the invest-in-popcorn-when-this-hits-mainstream-politics dept.

New submitter DaemonDan writes "The first successful pregnancy by IVF was accomplished over 50 years ago, essentially creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Many scientists are trying to take it one step farther with a 100% test tube baby brought to term in an artificial womb. 'Cornell University's Dr. Hung-Ching Liu has engineered endometrial tissues by prompting cells to grow in an artificial uterus. When Liu introduced a mouse embryo into the lab-created uterine lining, "It successfully implanted and grew healthy," she said in this New Atlantis Magazine article. Scientists predict the research could produce an animal womb by 2020, and a human model by early 2030s.' The author of the article seems to believe that birth via artificial wombs could become the new norm, but is it really feasible, desirable or even affordable for the majority of Earth's population?"

I keep thinking of how sci-fi writers sometimes get behind the "now". In Dune they had "Axlotyl tanks" to grow clones in, and it turned out that these "tanks" were human women. And Dune was set 1000 years in the future. Are they going to call these artificial wombs Axlotyl Tanks?

Star Trek did the same thing when McCoy gave Kirk reading glasses, and the CrystaLens came out about fifteen years later.

Taking this question entirely seriously for a moment and assuming you were too.

IVF is popular because something like 1 in 7 couples have difficulty conceiving naturally. Even having managed to conceive something like 70-80% of conceptions fail to result in a viable pregnancy because they don't attach properly to the uterine lining. It's part of the reason that even women who aren't on birth control don't have a pregnancy every month they are 'fertile' and have sex.

Potentially the use of artificial wombs would reduce the instance of miscarriage and improve the success rates of IVF beyond what is currently normal. There are plenty of people out there who would like to have children for whom 'good old fashioned fucking' isn't a viable solution.

Is there seriously a need to come up with new methods other than good old fashioned fucking?

No - if you consider humanity only as a homogeneous mass of animal flesh.

As someone married to a mother, let me give an alternative view : Yes, definitely. Ever witnessed a birth, even with an epidural ? Or just stood in the same building of the hospital maternity ward ? Every 10 babies or so you will hear the screams. While many young women, and most men have this romanticized notion of birth (for obvious reasons), but you'll find a much different view among women who've already given birth.

On another note...when asking "why"....is it like we have some type of population problems? Not enough people being born?

No, it's because individuals have this crazy instinct to fulfil their biological urges by propagating their DNA.

Actually yes, we do. The human birthrate is falling worldwide, right now still heading to overpopulation in the short term, as the total number of young people is still increasing (the number of babies is very close to stagnation, and will soon start to drop though). However, if the decreasing fertility trends spread around the globe (and they are), once we hit ~2055, the number of humans alive will fall off a cliff, which will not be a desirable outcome at all. A little before that, so many people will become pensioners it won't be funny at all. It won't be localized anywhere, it'll be global. Think recession, but with no cheap mexicans/asians/africans to import at all, and every country having the exact same problem.

Regardless of how far robotics will be along at the time (and there's always the chance it won't be far enough along at all), do you really think having a country's population drop by ~8% per year for 2 decades will lead to stable countries ?

So it would be very prudent to start breeding humans, which imho is only unethical if they are somehow treated as inferior to the rest of us, in 10-15 years in relatively large numbers (hundreds of thousands a year). We can still let the total population drop, but slowly, in a way that countries, nations and we ourselves might actually survive.

Gosh.
"Dune" is 20.000 years after the invention of space travel. The god emperor is around 4.000 yrars after that. Then the Chapterhose is around 1.500 years after the death of Leto II.
Am I the only one around here that read each god damn book at least ten times?

Maybe McGrew's a computer scientist. Look at the way they name things. 8 bits is a byte, and half of a byte is a nibble. You come from a background like that and you're seriously liable to name anything after whimsey:)

Uterine replicators were pretty central to the start of Bujold's series in '86 with one of her first Hugo's coming out of that initial plot. She's examined their impact from a few different angles over the years - although it's just background or a side line in many of the Vorkosigan novels. I'd say she gave it a far better treatment than Herbert (though he certainly got there first) who only ever managed to share a Hugo let alone win the four Bujold's got. Actually, I think I liked the collaborative work of his son with Anderson a bit more than most of the original Dune books (barring Dune itself), although their work is probably best accompanied by a SSRI.

One of the things I appreciate about SF is not just the imagination of the future as much as exploring the ethics and social implications of where we might end up.

Still, even Bujold is fairly recent. Personally I suspect that if men were the ones getting pregnant we'd have had da Vinci making designs for uterine replicators and the Germans would have perfected them in the 30's.

It will be interesting to see how the debate goes when they start being used, particularly as cosmetic and convenience reasons are likely to be significant drivers. I'm certain some groups will find (or make up) a lot of reasons to oppose them, despite the many and obvious advantages.

A major reason that women didn't do these things and were in the position they were is precisely because of childbearing and raising being an expensive proposition. If men were bearing children, they'd be in the same boat. Men had the duty of going out and ranging either to hunt or fight. This also had the advantage of exposing them to other ideas from over the hill.

I don't know. I asked my wife and she said she really enjoyed being pregnant and wouldn't have wanted to miss out on it for anything. Except maybe the morning sickness and the last 3-4 weeks. I expect a lot of women feel the same. Not all, certainly.

10000 years is a bit too far off. One study I've heard states that by the year 6565, you'll need neither a husband nor a wife - you'll just pick your son (and your daughter, too) from the bottom of a long, glass tube.

Nor did he see any previous comments (like mine, which noted that in Dune, 1000 years in the future, axlotyl tanks are human women). Lots of redundancy in this thread, I wonder if the mods will notice?

(clicking "no bonus buttons because I'm not exactly on-topic here. Hell, if everyone else deserves a downmod I might as well too!)

Not so much a baby shortage as a baby distribution issue. Same with food, water, and most other essentials. We have enough for everyone, it's just some places have so much they waste it whereas other places have severe shortages.

While I realize that there are some that can't adopt due to innefficiencies and high costs of adoption, I think the main reason is that many people just plain don't want kids anymore. In western society where they don't provide an income, and in actuality cost a lot of money, there's many reasons not to have kids. I have 3 myself, but I can see where people could be perfectly happy with no kids at all.

Nope, still wrong. Plenty of parents are willing to adopt, as proof look at foreign adoptions. What almost nobody wants is to adopt a kid more than a few months old. Hence the giant foster care system. But for babies supply of parents far exceeds supply of children.

Not that there isn't some use for this device. I'm thinking for women who can't safely carry to term, they could have the baby moved to an artificial womb. Other than that it's a toy for very rich people who want to have a kid with their DNA but don't want to actually be pregnant- think trophy wives.

If it were cheap enough I would think all women would want to go this route. Pregnancy takes a huge toll on a woman's body and health. Even worse are the possible complications. People still die in childbirth.

I wouldn't expect it to get cheap enough. I also worry about negative side effects. Immunity comes to mind immediately- babies get some immunity from the mother's blood to common illnesses, what would the effect of missing that be long term?

Nope, still wrong. Plenty of parents are willing to adopt, as proof look at foreign adoptions. What almost nobody wants is to adopt a kid more than a few months old. Hence the giant foster care system. But for babies supply of parents far exceeds supply of children.

My wife and I have looked into either foster care or adopting older children, the big roadblock for us was all the rules & regulations. For instance, they wanted us to have a fire escape added to our house since the extra rooms we have are on the second floor. We can't afford to make those kinds of modification to our house AND take on a couple of extra children.

More than just that - pregnant women have to worry about the nutrition and avoid harmful substances for at least 9 months, if not more (for nursing), and then they have to go through a painful and possibly damaging to both themself and the child birthing process. If I were female I'd much rather have sex for fun and bypass the whole birthing process.

As a female, I say, YAY! In 2030 I'll be reaching my mid-40s and ready to raise children! I'm going to get some of my eggs frozen RIGHT NOW so that I won't have to worry about all those age-related birth defects. AND I'll be able to eat sushi, clean out the litterbox, and continue exercising normally while my baby grows somewhere that's NOT my body. This is a win. Go go gadget babygrower.

Indeed. It'd be nice not to worry about premature birth, C sections(required or elective), split perineums, or even just carrying a watermelon around for months.

Even better, no longer needed to have a uterine lining shed every month. Clone it, freeze the sample for later, and then burn that fucker out. No "red tides", no accidental pregnancy, reduced cancer risks. Awesome.

If a government wants to prohibit abortion, they can just require that she give up her embryo or fetus for adoption when she terminates the pregnancy, with the state picking up the tab over and above the cost of an abortion.

This assumes, of course, that removing the embryo or fetus in a way that allows transplant to an artificial womb doesn't put the mother at a greater health risk than an abortion.

I think you're right -- assuming that the embryo or fetus can be transplanted from a biological to an artificial womb, this should be a legitimate solution to the abortion politics problem. The woman would be able to stop carrying her pregnancy at any time. The Church no longer needs to be worried about the destruction of life. Abortion could be outlawed in favor of this other measure, consistent with pro-life views.

While I empathize with you and your wife's situation, your child does not have to be an only child because adoption exists and if you insist on a biological sibling, there is IFV with a surrogate that would be 10s of thousands of dollars less expensive than this if it is ever commercially available. The only thing this replaces is the need for a surrogate, the rest of the process is the same and available today.

Many of us out here are former golden children who got burnt out not on our ability to succeed, but in the direction things are heading. There's a default assumption that there is no other way, and that this way is good or at least necessary.

The result is a strong cynicism, even toward most solutions.

The "something else" however is always there. I will always believe in people. Not all of them, but the good ones. I don't know if there is an objectiv

but is it really feasible, desirable or even affordable for the majority of Earth's population?

This will be primarily used by those who can not conceive and those who cannot carry to term. That would be a huge intervention in the evolutionary process, as those are the people we DON'T want to reproduce.

Why, exactly, do we not WANT them to reproduce? There are some genetic traits that affect reproduction as well as other systems that may be desirable to not pass on, but there are plenty of genetic reproduction issues that otherwise have no effect on the person. Why shouldn't they be allowed to pass those on? What about people who can't reproduce because of a surgery, accident, etc completely unrelated to genetics?

We left "natural" evolution a long time ago... many thousands of years. And we forced dogs, co

Really? Artificial wombs, FFS? Look around you, Dr. Fertility. The natural wombs are pumping out product at a terrifyingly prodigious rate with no help from you. Maybe you can work on some other organ that we maybe need to stay alive or something?

we don't know that much about early human development, though it's pretty clearly not simple (more like chaotic). without knowing which sensory inputs are important to healthy development, an artificial womb would need to attempt to replicate them all. heck, there are plenty of substances that cross the placenta, and most of them would need to be emulated too.

in other words, producing a mouse-like mouse from an artificial mouse womb is rather different from doing it with humans...

"[I]s it really feasible, desirable or even affordable for the majority of Earth's population?"

Clearly, no. But this is beside the point. Maybe it will be one day. And in the much nearer future, it will be just the thing we will turn to because we start having ethical problems with renting the wombs of poor women in India who presently serve as surrogates for fertility-challenged rich couples.

But for me, the real sci-fi potential of this technology is in interstellar colonization. The idea is that frozen genetic material can survive a long trip much better than any living organism, especially if we're talking about slow trips that might take centuries. However, with proper shielding and error control, a lab that can produce artificial wombs and gestate babies should be much easier, technologically. I'm guessing that by the end of this century, all the pieces will be in place: An artificial womb, an AI that can operate it, correct preservation techniques, and an AI parenting program that does a more ethical job of parenting that many human parents who are still allowed to keep their kids. That, together with AI school, basically makes for a highly portable civilization reproduction package. Only the first generation would need to be raised by pure technology, although I'm sure that since they have the technology, they would want to keep using it to grow the size of the colony and add to their genetic diversity.

but is it really feasible, desirable or even affordable for the majority of Earth's population?"

No, yes, no.

The majority of the planet's population is still living near the poverty line. What they have they spend on food and shelter and other essentials. But in that same demographic, death in childbed is still very real for both mother and child, so something less risky would be desirable.

From a global perspective, hower, low population is not exactly a problem we are having. So this should not be about producing more humans.

An artificial womb might not primarily be interesting for human reproduction, but for example in conservational biology to re-establish near extinct species, this could be a great tool! Coupled with the technologies of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), where one can de-differentiate a mature somatic cell and then differentiate it into sperm and egg cells we could also generate a large progeny even from a limited number of individuals. Further, the same technology could theoretically be used to surpass many of the reproductive species barriers and make it possible to generate completely new hybrid species. Especially since one could do repeated cycles of embryonic stem cell to egg/sperm differentiations in vitro, one could in this way generate completely new species out of invitro hybrid breeding. I have no idea how far apart species can be with this method, but regulations probably would have to be put in place to avoid generation of new sub-species of humans generated by in vitro hybrid breeding with the other great apes. Who knows... perhaps it would even be possible to breed crocodiles and birds and get some sort of approximation of dinosaurs using this method...

There is no compelling contextual evidence for the age or gender of the original poster. For all we know, sexconker might very well be a young girl with a geeky streak who happens to like gourmet ice cream and pretty boys with good pipes. I sang baritone in school. An i've been told i clean up well. Anyone in SF bay area interested in starting an a Capella group? We can call ourselves "Super Cache", or maybe go with "Beowulf". What kind of name is likely to attract the attention of the geek girl among /

But of course, if we grow humans in an artificial womb, they wouldn't really alive until we take them out at the end of the 9-month procedure, right?

If you are referring to abortion poltics, the term you are looking for is "legal person."

There is no question that a zygote is biologically human and biologically alive.

Legal person-hood is another matter. This is granted - and taken away - by the common consensus of society or in some cases, the edict of a government or dictator that doesn't reflect the consensus of society. Even ignoring "artificial legal persons" like corporations, a society can grant legal personhood - the state of having the rights of a living person - on sufficiently-intelligent animals or non-earth-originated sentient aliens or even sentient human-created life forms (e.g. computer programs, androids, etc.) if it wants to. If it wants to, it can also take away or deny the personhood of living humans who are too young (e.g. not born yet, or not old enough to be more self-aware than non-human animals), or severely mentally retarded or severely brain-damaged. We can also take away personhood by declaring someone dead even if they are still breathing. Most Western countries do this today when they declare someone "brain dead" if their autonomic systems are working but there is no other brain function.

By the way, I am NOT advocating denying anyone who has already been born the status of "person" for reasons of mental or physical incapacity short of brain death. If the society I live in makes this a common practice, I'll probably move.

This is the next generation in fertility treatments, not some way to eliminate the female sex.

This isn't about fertility treatments. IVF is about fertility treatments. Granted some woman cannot carry a pregnancy to term, but in those cases there are surrogates. This is about freeing woman from the so called bondage of having to be pregnant at all.

By the time you "make" the clones, raise them, educate them, train them, the cost would be astronomical for an army or any worthwhile force. Plus, new soldiers would be at least 16 years out, to be generous.

Meanwhile you can crank out robots by the truckload for a fraction of the cost. They have much simpler logistical requirements in terms of food, housing, and other amenities. More durable, better endurance, can be repaired. We're a lot closer to robot soldiers than clone soldiers too.=Smidge=